Xiaomi Mi Watch launched with WearOS & SD3100 4G chip at 1,299 yuan

Today at its launch event in China, Xiaomi has revealed a lot of items and Mi Watch is one of them. Xiaomi who is quite dominant in the smart band and fitness tracker market recently announced the budget-oriented Mi Band 4 offering a colour display.

Xiaomi’s sub-brand Huami is more famous for its smartwatches, but Xiaomi never did make one, instead always went for the budget fitness trackers under the brand of Mi Band. Now the Chinese giant has heard its fans and given its answer in the form of the new Mi Watch.

Design & Display

Xiaomi’s first-ever smartwatch looks a lot more common with the Apple watch, some can blindly tell this to a replica of it. The smartwatch has the same Apple design featuring a curved display up-top, ceramic bottom, and a digital crown on the right. The only difference between both of them is that the Xiaomi’s one has more of a box-shaped design.

Mi Watch features an aluminium alloy frame and comes with a matte finish, but it has sharper curves than the Apple Watch. The crown on the right can be used to navigate through the watch UI and also there’s a multi-purpose button as well as a microphone on the right side. At the bottom of the Mi Watch, there’s the charging dock and the heart rate monitor.

The watch features a 1.78-inch AMOLED curved touchscreen display protected by sapphire glass with 326 PPI and the back of the watch is made out of ceramic. Xiaomi says that it is using 4D curved sapphire glass to make its Mi smartwatch scratch-resistant.

Xiaomi is also offering removable straps made out of fluoro rubber which is skin-friendly and anti-allergic. These straps are available in multiple colour options including white, blue, silver, and black. The strap buckle, on the other hand, comes with the MI branding in a metallic black shade.

Performance & UI

This smartwatch is quite a premium one for Xiaomi and so the brand has included the new Snapdragon Wear 3100 4G chipset, making the Mi Watch the only device to use this modern chipset, even though the Fossil Gen 5 watches use it but lacks the cellular connectivity. The new Snapdragon Wear 3100 features four Cortex A7 cores clocked at 1.2GHz.

The UI that has been used is Google’s Wear OS platform, but as Xiaomi does to its smartphones, they have also included its own UI on top of the Wear OS. Xiaomi’s UI offers a number of cool watch faces for the smartwatch and comes integrated with Xiaomi’s own XiaoAI assistant.

When you raise your wrist there you will see 100+ dial options out-of-the-box and the convenience to set your own custom message on top it. Xiaomi Mi Watch also features its own in-built app store that will offer 40+ optimized apps for the new watch including apps like Chinese apps like QQ, WeChat, and Keep.

The Mi Watch supports native music playback and includes an app drawer to easily scroll through all installed apps. Like the Mi Band 4, the Xiaomi smartwatch supports heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen VO2 max sensor, sleep monitoring, and body energy monitoring.

Xiaomi in its marketing videos, it has also confirmed that the Mi Watch is safe for swimming as well. Its smart functionality gets enhanced with the presence of NFC, allowing you to make payments in China. You can also book cabs, talk to the cab driver, and scan your subway pass all from your wrist with this smartwatch.

The Mi Watch is also capable of connecting to and controlling smart home appliances at your home. The digital crown that is coupled with a vibration motor, helps to control the temperature or volume with gentle haptic feedback.

Battery & Connectivity

Xiaomi’s smartwatch features a big 570mAh battery, one of the biggest batteries ever seen on a smartwatch. Even the Apple Watch 5 comes with just 455mAh, Xiaomi claims that the Mi Watch can last up to 36 hours or up to two days on a single charge.

On the connectivity front, the Mi Watch features the Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi (n) and GPS, also like the top smartwatch models of 2019, the Mi Watch supports eSIM. It ensures that you can connect to the internet via cellular network as well as make and receive calls independently.

Price & Availability

Xiaomi’s first-ever smartwatch Mi Watch has been priced aggressively and will be available at 1299 yuan (approx $185 or Rs.13,116) in China. Also, there’s a more premium version of Mi Watch that features a stainless steel frame and 4D curved sapphire glass protection.

This premium version has been priced at 1,999 yuan (around $285 or Rs.20,000). The Mi Watch will be available in two colour variants – silver and black. It will be up for reservations from 5 PM today and will be available from 11th November.